How to Live for a Century

While we haven’t found the fountain of youth, and all the latest diet and fitness fads grow outdated when the newest diets and fitness fads come along.

There does seem to be one source of wisdom that we could pay heed to if we want to figure out how to live longer.

How to Live for a Century

Listen to those who actually have lived the longest. How exactly do some people manage to live up to a century – how do some manage to live even longer than that? What are their secrets, and can we learn from them? We have put together the wisdom of centenarians for you to use in your own life – maybe you will get to live to be over 100 too?

Dr Shigeaki Hinohara – 106 years old

How to Live for a Century – Dr Shigeaki Hinohara

Who better to seek the secrets of longevity from than the oldest working doctor in the world. Dr. Hinohara still teaches throughout Japan and has a philosophy to always keep busy. He has even put his wisdom into a book called “Living Long, Living Good”.

He suggests it is important to always keep your weight at a healthy level. He is the same weight of 60kgs that he maintained when he was in his 30s. To maintain that weight he also believes that keeping busy suppresses hunger, so he can survive on juices for breakfast, biscuits for lunch and rice and fish for dinner, or other meals along that theme.

Feeling good is crucial to his longevity – just like children who forget to eat or sleep when they are having too much fun, he makes sure he too keeps a child-like attitude to life. Contributing to the world is paramount, and sharing your knowledge keeps you as an open fountain of life. Dr Hinohara still lectures till this very day.

He is also a great believer in having a healthy skepticism of doctors, even though he himself is one, and that alternative therapies with music, art and pets are extremely effective at bringing people back to having a positive urge to be alive. He also believes in finding a role model, and sees his father as his. Maybe Dr Hinohara could be yours?

Acciaroli, Italy – the Town filled with Centenarians

How to Live for a Century – Acciaroli, Italy – the Town filled with Centenarians

In a town with 300 centenarians, there must be priceless secrets that are waiting to be revealed as to how the rest of us can live so long like they all do. The Mediterranean diet is considered a major factor, and also the healthy and active lifestyles they lead.

Not only are they living to be 100, they have barely any Alzheimer’s disease or heart disease amongst them all, which has researchers keen to investigate and study them. Eating locally sourced food – even better if you have grown it in a garden that you tend – is crucial to their dietary habits. Lots of water, olive oil and only a couple of dairy servings per day. Meat and fish only being consumed about twice a week.

But the locals didn’t want to focus on their diet as being the true reason – many suggest it is maintaining romantic love and affection for your husband or wife for your entire lives.

Dorothy Rungeling – 105 years’ old

How to Live for a Century – Dorothy Rungeling

Adventure and making yourself face your fears seems to be the key to Dorothy Rungeling’s longevity. One would never quite believe that someone who was afraid of flying would go on to become on of Canada’s first women to obtain an air license.

She wrote 4 books, the Flying Housewife and Its Fun to Get Old – the latter may give away some of her wisdom of how to live long. She never drank or smoke, and spent her life encouraging other women to face things that they think are impossible, and to just do those things.

She believes that the mistake people make is to believe that life should slow down when you hit your 50s and 60s – she feels that is when the opposite occurred for her – her life only began properly when she reached middle age.

Irene O’Shea – 100 years old

How to Live for a Century – Irene O’Shea

Living your life as a daredevil seems to be the key to the longevity of Irene O’Shea. Last May 2016 she became the oldest person to skydive in South Australia, in order to raise funds for Motor Neuron disease. Her daughter died from this disease in 2008.

Irene didn’t let her child’s death slow her down, instead her love for her daughter has inspired her to bring awareness to the condition and to make sure others don’t have to suffer in the same way. And she will continue to be adventurous, as she has travelled the world and has maintained her curiosity about life.

Zoltan Sarosy – 110 years old

How to Live for a Century – Zoltan Sarosy

When he was 8 years old the Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, when he was living on a military base where his father was a doctor. Immediately his mother organized their escape to Budapest. Not many people have memories that reach back as far as World War I.

Sarosy went on to become a chess master in both both his native country and in Toronto, and despite the dramas of his early life, his active mind seems to have been the key to keeping him alive well past 100, into “supercentenarian” status. He is always curious about new things, and never get’s caught on the idea that things were better in the old days.

Not being a luddite seems to help you to live a longer life. He also claims he never took to smoking, and drinking alcohol never interested him.